Nov 8, 2008

malaysianwaves | I had a very interesting conversation with a Pakatan Rakyat activist friend of mine from Hulu Langat. He has taught me something that many had overlooked.The Pakatan Rakyat’s Selangor government had passed a policy stating that politicians are not to be member to tender committee in every level of government in Selangor. This is meant to curb corruption that has existed since the BN time.

It was perceived that when politicians sits in the tender committees they tend to influence decisions and thus always end up awarding contracts to cronies.

The policy is passed with the intention to curb such practice. The downside to this practice is the assumption that all government employee are also clean from corruption. Since politicians are barred from becoming members of the tender committees, only government officials are allowed to sit in it. Unfortunately, the current crop of government employees that Selangor has are remnants from the BN days. They too benefited from the corrupt practices of UMNO and thus their decisions even today follow along the lines of what they were used to.

In other words, contracts and projects are still being awarded to UMNO cronies and UMNO machinery by the current crop of government employees whom have been passing projects to these people all the while. As a result, the UMNO rank and file are still siphoning money from the Pakatan Rakyat state government to oil the political machinery at the grassroot levels.... selanjutnya.